Newsletter forty six

Alright, I’ll admit it, I’m already getting too excited for Christmas. I promise I won’t peak too soon, honest, but youngest Cochrane and I can’t stop singing the Christmas songs already. Deck the halls!

News

Advent starts next week, which means two things:
The Speak Its Name Advent calendar will be up and running, with loads of authors taking part and goodies to be won. Not sure when my offering will appear – will let you know when it appears “behind the door”.

I’ll be doing my usual series of Advent posts over at my other LJ, mylodon. Have a look here for what I did last year and feel free to either follow them this year, or to “pass”.

Have another couple of short stories contracted to come out next year, one of which is Olympics themed. Or, more specifically, Paralympics. This is an unedited snippet from Tumble Turn, set on the day London learned it had been awarded the Games:

I like Matty’s mum, I like her a lot, and she’d been a real rock to him when he was feeling a bit lost after his dad left, but she likes to put labels on things and stick them away in compartments. “Second wives are like cats, only in it for what they can get. Once they spot a better home they’ll up sticks and go there.” The second Mrs. White came in for a fair bit of the first Mrs. White’s labelling.

“Matty’s from a broken home, so he can’t ever be expected to do as well as the other boys at school.” That was another one of her favourites, closely followed by “Ben’s got cerebral palsy, poor lamb. Of course that means he can’t do what the other boys do.” I gave up arguing with her. I used to hear her tell Matty something along the lines of him making sure he looked after me when we went to parties, because I had cerebral palsy—I think she thought Matty managed to wake up each day and forget that—and so I wouldn’t be able to join in any fun that was going on. If she’d seen me on the dance floor giving Abba some welly I suspect she’d have pretended not to notice as it would have shaken her preconceptions.

Matty was different. As soon as his mum had left the room that auspicious day, he’d just rolled his eyes, winked and said that if I didn’t get him the best seats in the house to watch me in 2012, then he’d thump me. I punched him a couple of times and we started to laugh, because life’s good when you’re fourteen and you don’t know your limits. Matty always believed in me.

My parents believed in me, too. When I got home later, they were almost as excited as we’d been. Mum loved the cycling and the rowing—still does—and she was already planning all the events she wanted to watch. Dad’s more the water events type, so he was putting in his two pennyworth for the ten metre platform diving or something. I went along with the flow, setting out my order for athletics tickets, just on the off chance that my training schedule was going to let me get to see some of the other Olympic events. It was only over dinner, when they’d planned themselves hoarse, that I dropped the bombshell.

“I’ll be there. Of course.” I can remember the situation as clear as yesterday. I was halfway through one of Mum’s pasta bakes, making sure I didn’t slitter it down my t-shirt. I’m only an S9, although I didn’t know that back then, I just knew that I had things pretty mild compared to how it could have been. I was at mainstream school and doing pretty well, even though I say so myself.

See, my parents were the direct opposite of Mrs. White. Their attitude was, “Ben, he’s got cerebral palsy. Of course he can do what the other boys do. He might just need a bit of help.” So I had this really neat apron to wear at mealtimes if I wanted to—butcher’s blue and white stripes—and Dad had a matching one because he slitters worse than I do and he hasn’t even got an excuse.

Inspiration:

With Armistice and Remembrance days just passed, I’ve been listening to this song a lot. Caveat – you may need tissues.